[Lord Snooty]

July 10:

Jack Swann was born on this date in 1893, in Easington, County Durham.

He signed for Town in October 1919, just as the financial crisis was kicking in. He was taken on as a replacement for Jack Cock, who had been sold to Chelsea as part of the plans to recover from debt. His old club was Seaham Colliery and at 26 years old, this was his first venture into the Football League. Having played for the pit team, one would imagine he spent his war years deep down, cutting coal from a seam. That's just what I reckon though. Nothing to back that up.

He made his Town debut in a 2-2 draw down at Fulham. Sammy Taylor scored one of the goals, with the other coming from an own goal scored by Alex Chaplin, the brother of future Town manager, Jack Chaplin. He played every game after that in the season that ended with promotion and a first ever FA Cup Final, forming a formidable attacking line up with Taylor, George Richardson, Frank Mann and Billy Smith.

Jack scored his first Town goals, two of them, in a 5-0 win at home to Coventry, during a time when the crisis off the field was reaching it's lowest point. Leeds had just put their bid into the league to do an "MK Dons" on us, but on the field, that win moved us up to 5th in the Second Division.

He netted 19 times in that league campaign, including hat tricks against Rotherham County and Port Vale. He also scored in the Cup run, one of them in the 2-1 win at home to Liverpool which gave us the new attendance record at the time of 47,527.

In the next season, the first ever First Division season for the club, he scored 8 from 26 games, including two in a 5-2 demolition of Man Utd and two in a 2-0 win over Spurs. But then in October of the next season, he was sold to our new neighbouring team, lowly Leeds Urinals of the Second Division. That move came after he had scored 36 goals in 74 games for the Town.

He bagged a boatload in Beeston as well, scoring 47 in 108 matches in the blue n white striped shirts that they stole (yes they stole the actual kit) from us, helping them win promotion to the First Division in 1924. He scored 18 goals in that season as the BellEnders won the title.

In the next season, Huddersfield Town traveled to Bellend Road for the first time since all the kerfuffle in 1919 and the formation of the new Leeds club. A crowd of 41,800 came out to see the Town, newly crowned champions of England and top of the league again. The game was drawn 1-1, with Billy Smith getting ours. It was Jack Swann who got theirs.

Anyway, after four years there, he moved on to Watford and then QPR. Don't know what he did after retiring, but he did turn up as Guest of Honour for the Centenary FA Cup Final in 1972 as the oldest surviving player who had played in a Cup Final.

And he just kept going, living until 1990 when he died aged 97.

Here he is in one of those stolen Town shirts masquerading as a Leeds Utd shirt.

On this date in 2020, we had another dire performance for Town in the Covid lockdown games. This was the sixth of the remaining games to be played after the league started up again and it was Luton Town who were the visitors to the John McAlpharm Stadium.

This was the third game in a row that we didn't score, following the surprise 3-0 win at Birmingham. We followed that with nil nils against Preston and Reading. This was just getting worse. Goals from Sonny Bradley and Elliot Lee gave the points to the Hatters, who started the day on the bottom of the table.

The result moved Luton above Barnsley and only three points off Town in 19th. With only three games to go, it was pick any three from us, Luton, Barnsley, Hull, Charlton, Boro and Stoke to go down. Not many points between us. Which three would make the drop?

Next for Town is a midweek trip to Hillsborough. A must win game because the one after that will be 2nd placed West Brom coming to ours.